[lit-ideas] Re: "The Austrian Engineer"
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:16:57 -0230
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
>
> --- On Sat, 18/4/09, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
> > Subject: [lit-ideas] "The Austrian Engineer"
> > To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Date: Saturday, 18 April, 2009, 4:37 PM
> > Donal thinks that Witters was
> > problematic about 'atoms', 'simple things'
> > (in life), 'simple objects', etc.
> >
> > I go with R. Paul's interpretation (echoing Malcolm
> > -- Was Mrs. Malcolm
> > sexy?)
>
> Robert Paul quoted:
> 'I asked Wittgenstein whether, when he wrote the _Tractatus_, he had ever
> decided upon anything as an example of a "simple object". His reply was that
> at that time his thought had been that he was a _logician_; and that it was
> not his business, as a logician, to try to decide whether this thing or that
> was a simple or complex thing, that being a purely _empirical_ matter! It was
> clear that he regarded his former opinion as absurd.'
>
> And you suggest this implies there was no problem or nothing problematic? (It
> does not matter that W did not see a problem at some stage or only saw it at
> a later stage: 'objectively', as with the contradiction at the heart of
> Frege's work, there was surely a problem).
>
> Donal
> London
I think Donal's comment here is an important one for how we understand
philosophical argument and the "existence" of philosophical problems. Once we
bestow some sort of privileged authority on the author's own interpretation or
assessment of her texts or accounts we cease doing philosophy and start doing
biography or sociology. (Sometimes, the move commits a form of informal fallacy
- argument from authority. We are motivated to think that if someone of the
intellectual stature of a W comes to believe a view is absurd, be it one of his
own past ones or not, then that belief possesses epistemic, justificatory status
or warrant by the mere act of its evincement. But philosophers rarely possess
papal infallibility.)
By way of another example: whether the making of a lying promise to protect a
human life is deemed by Kant to be morally impermissible on the basis of his
moral theory is an empirical question having no philosophical value in the
determination of the permissibility/impermissibility of the maxim on the basis
of Kant's moral theory. Similarly, what The Master thought about the rightness
or wrongness of polygamy or masturbation is not eo ipso decisive in answering
these moral questions. Indeed, he may be quite off the wall for that matter.
Walter Okshevsky
MUN
>
>
>
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